The patriarch of the Wyeth family of painters and a prolific Maine artist, N.C. Wyeth, appeared to sign a picture that an antiques fan bought for $4 in a thrift store in 2017. She jokingly suggested that the $4 piece might truly be a genuine Wyeth work. The picture is now antici to sell for as much as $250,000 at auction in September, proving that her joke was not to taken lightly.

The seller accidentally bought the piece at a Savers thrift shop in Manchester, New Hampshire, while looking for frames to repurpose, claim experts at the Bonhams Skinner auction house. The Wyeth picture was prop up against a wall.

The seller accidentally bought the piece at a Savers thrift shop in Manchester, New Hampshire, while looking for frames to repurpose, claim experts at the Bonhams Skinner auction house. According to the auction company, the Wyeth was thrown up against a wall alongside several mostly damaged posters and prints.

The woman brought the sculpture home, but a simple Google search turned up nothing about it. She hung the painting in her bedroom for several years before putting it away in a closet.

Thrift Store

This past May, while cleaning, she rediscovered the painting. She then posted pictures of the piece on the “Things Found in Walls” Facebook page, which collects “stories of things you have found in walls, dug up in your backyard, or in that abandoned house across from your grandma’s.”

She got in touch with Lauren Lewis after reading comments on the page since Lauren Lewis used to work as a curator and had paintings by three generations of the Wyeth family: Jamie Wyeth, Andrew Wyeth, and N.C. Wyeth. After physically inspecting the item, Lewis was “99% certain it was authentic,” according to her statement to The Boston Globe.

Lewis told the Globe that although having some minor wear and tear, the object was in given that none of us knew it had been for the last 80 years.scratches and it could use a surface clean.

Read More: Black women are absent from advertising. In front of and behind